Witnessing a motorway blockage…

New Zealand Nov/Dec 2011

New Zealand Nov/Dec 2011, a set on Flickr.

5 and a half weeks in New Zealand

The latest oil spill, as reported at
the BBC

Contains the gem:

The department's spokesman added that it understood from Shell that there was a "finite amount of oil that can be dispersed"


I think we knew that already....

Images from Mull in a separate blog :

Mullpics blog

Some images from Mull, July 2011

My Photos from last Summer, Bilbao and The Pyrenees

Exams by computer

I'm waking up slowly the other day, and one of my pleasures is to listen to Radio4 before I drag myself out of bed to face the day. Isabel Nisbet, the outgoing chief of OfQual, was on. She has a lovely idea: the youth of tomorrow should do their examinations on computer.

Well, fine and dandy. Let's just imagine that we're a sixth form college or around 3000 students. We have two years, both of which do exams in the summer, and there is some overlap in the timetables.

Soooooo....we could have around 2000 students doing exams at the same time. Now, we need a bit of leeway, and we have a three year replacement cycle so...

• I need to build a network to manage 2000 computers
• I need to buy around 700 a year to replace old ones- that's a budget of around a quarter of a million a year on computers alone.
• I need, ooh, 40 computer rooms - which I don't need the rest of the year.
• Oh, and they need to be secure for exams.

If Ms Nisbet can tell me where that lot is coming from, I'm up for it.

Reporting SPAM...

I even had a reply from the nice lady at the SPAM reporting centre, apologising for the SPAM blocking stuff.

She suggested I sent my emails in by post.



AAAArghh.......